The beautiful people ride the Clark bus.

This is from an email I received this morning:

I just wanted to inform you that tomorrow morning from 8:30 am and 10 am there is going to be a drum ceremony on the 8th floor of the building sponsored by the Dept of Management.

Such is life workin' in the Big City, I suppose.

Speaking of Big City L-i-v-i-n', the CTA has been especially rewarding lately. On Monday, Christina and I had the Memorial Day treat of riding the Clark bus north to Adam and Alissa's. We had to literally flag one down as it zoomed right by our stop (Christina is very aggressive when it comes to hailing buses), and when we got on I realized very quickly that the driver wasn't ignoring us out of spite; on the contrary: he was trying to do us a favor, as there was a very loud Asian lady shouting about a whole variety of things, including CitiBank, Korean broadcasting networks, Wrigleyville: Past and Present, and Christina's toenail polish ("Where did girls get thirty-five dollar for expensive pedicure? Steal pedicure?"). There was, of course, a home game at Wrigley, so we got to sit there for several minutes in traffic while the bus driver and the Asian lady yelled at each other ("If you don't shut up I'm going to make you get off this bus!" "OK, CTA! I got your message. You got my message and I got your message.")

And, just our luck, we happened to catch another Crazy Bus on the way home This time we sat next to a woman who was clearly celebrating Memorial Day in her own, very special way: by pushing around a walker decorated with American flags and balloons. She broke her silence about five minutes after we boarded, deciding that it was the perfect time to thank the bus driver (whom she also referred to as "CTA," because that's the universal name crazies give to our fine transit employees) for being so good to her, as opposed to the PACE bus drivers in the suburbs. After an awkward response ("...The CTA... appreciates your business..."), the woman sang a verse of "American the Beautiful" and mentioned how she asked "the man playing an accordion outside of Wrigley Field" to play "God Bless America," and, natch, the Cubs started to win. ("There must have been angels in the outfield!" she suggested.") AND THEN she started recounting how she met Bob Hope on the street and how he sent her a silver-plated Bible with one hundred and forty-eight dollars in it - "One hundred symbolizing the number of years he lived on this earth, and forty-eight signifying the year of my birth." (Obvs.) Also, Bob Hope fans will be happy to know that, according to my new friend, there's a golf course in Libertyville, Illinois (aptly named) where he drops golf balls from Heaven.

I understandably lost my shit when the Asian woman boarded the bus and sat down next to her patriotic counterpart. I was this close to convincing Christina to ride the bus four blocks further just to see how this encounter played out.

I think Charles Nelson Reilly is dropping crazy down from Heaven. God bless America.